Dependent Jill tends to household chores and finances while the self-sufficient Ellen deals with heavier work, such as chopping wood, repairing fences, and stalking the fox that keeps raiding their coops, although she is hesitant about killing it.

In the dead of winter, merchant seaman Paul Grenfel arrives in search of his grandfather, the former owner of the farm who died one year earlier.

[3] In adapting Lawrence's novella for the screen, Lewis John Carlino and Howard Koch opted to change the setting from 1918 England to contemporary Canada in an effort to make the plot more relevant for late-1960s audiences.

The film was released soon after the dissolution of the Motion Picture Association of America Production Code and includes scenes of nudity, masturbation, sexual activity involving Paul and Ellen, and physical relations between two women.

[5] Variety called it "beautifully photographed, dramatically uneven" where "the sensitive subject matter is, in the main, handled with taste, although pic at times vacillates between dainty skirting of the problem and crudity reminiscent of low-grade foreign imports.

"[6] Renata Adler of The New York Times called the film "a good and interesting movie" and continued, "The pace and the quality of the color, muted and unnatural, with many scenes photographed in shadows of various kinds, convey a brooding sense of something not quite right with everyone, rather like the tone of Reflections in a Golden Eye.

"[7] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the film "a quiet, powerful masterpiece" and added, "Do not go to see The Fox because of its subject matter, and do not stay away for that reason.

Since David and Lisa, he has been trapped into playing a series of insecure, weak characters; this time, as the dominant personality, he is altogether successful.

[10] It was a huge international box office success grossing an esimated $19 million and leading to Heywood being signed to a four-picture deal by Paramount.

The statute prohibited any “exhibit to public view on a screen or otherwise, any obscene, indecent, or immoral picture,” and authorizes an officer to make an arrest at any time without a warrant for a misdemeanor committed in his presence.

McGrew appealed the conviction, claiming that the Mississippi statute violated the first and fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution which guarantees freedom of expression.

The majority said, "The dominant theme of The Fox film is sex in a raw state in a product which the producers have attempted to whitewash and clean up just sufficiently to possibly escape condemnation as utter filth."

The dissenting judge said, "I think that the applicable Mississippi obscenity statute fails to meet the constitutional requirements of the first and fourteenth amendments guaranteeing freedom of expression.